Requiem for impact factors and high publication charges.

Journal impact factors, publication charges and assessment of quality and accuracy of scientific research are critical for researchers, managers, funders, policy makers, and society. Editors and publishers compete for impact factor rankings, to demonstrate how important their journals are, and researchers strive to publish in perceived top journals, despite high publication and access charges. This raises questions of how top journals are identified, whether assessments of impacts are accurate and whether high publication charges borne by the research community are justified, bearing in mind that they also collectively provide free peer-review to the publishers.

From Gutenberg to Open Science: An Unfulfilled Odyssey.

Preclinical Research With the almost global availability of the Internet comes the expectation of universal accessibility to knowledge, including scientific knowledge-particularly that generated by public funding. Currently this is not the case. In this Commentary we discuss access to this knowledge, the politics that govern peer review and publication, and the role of this knowledge as a public good in medicine.

Nous sommes tous des bacteries: implications for medicine, pharmacology and public health.

As a species we humans are outnumbered by bacteria in both cell and gene count. This somewhat humbling observation is key to the increasing recognition that the long-standing symbiotic and commensal relations between Homo sapiens and bacteria are of great significance to basic human physiology and health. Knowledge of our human bacterial environment is contributing to an understanding of a variety of disorders including obesity and metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, immunity, and neuronal development and behavior.

The chemist as astronaut: searching for biologically useful space in the chemical universe.

Chemical space whether defined by small molecules or large proteins is larger than can be usefully explored. One of the challenges of drug discovery is thus the definition of the overlap between chemical space, biologically useful space and pharmacological space and how this may be employed in the discovery of new small molecule drugs. Despite the decrease in drug discovery productivity in recent years there is no shortage of targets for small molecule intervention, including stroke, pain, neurodegenerative diseases, inflammation and bacterial and viral infections.

What is the future of peer review? Why is there fraud in science? Is plagiarism out of control? Why do scientists do bad things? Is it all a case of: "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"?

Peer review is an essential component of the process that is universally applied prior to the acceptance of a manuscript, grant or other scholarly work. Most of us willingly accept the responsibilities that come with being a reviewer but how comfortable are we with the process? Peer review is open to abuse but how should it be policed and can it be improved? A bad peer review process can inadvertently ruin an individual's career, but are there penalties for policing a reviewer who deliberately sabotages a manuscript or grant? Science has received an increasingly tainted name because of recent high profile cases of alleged scientific misconduct. Once considered the results of work stress or a temporary mental health problem, scientific misconduct is increasingly being reported and proved to be a repeat offence.